In an interview with Ellen DeGeneres to discuss his upcoming movie, Boy Erased, about a young man, Jared Eamons, who undergoes conversation therapy at the request on his Baptist pastor, Lucas Hedges talks about how sexuality is a spectrum. He appeared on DeGeneres’ daytime talk show along with co-star Nicole Kidman, who plays his mother in the film.

This isn’t the first time Hedges has discussed his own sexuality and the sexual spectrum. In September of this year, Hedges opened up in an interview with Vulture, knowing his sexuality would likely be a topic of conversation because of Boy Erased.

“I owe it to this part to speak as honestly as possible,” he told Vulture. “In the early stages of my life, some of the people I was most infatuated with were my closest male friends. That was the case through high school, and I think I was always aware that while for the most part I was attracted to women, I existed on a spectrum.”

Ellen asked Lucas to further expand on his statement, noting that the idea of sexuality existing on a spectrum is crucial for young people.

“In sixth grade I had a health teacher who presented the idea of sexuality existing on a spectrum,” Hedges said. “It’s not really that you exist 100 percent one thing and 100 percent the other, and from that moment on I always identified myself as existing within that spectrum. I see it as something that’s more fluid. It’s not as black and white.”

2 Comments

Ellen DeGeneres may have said it as a joke, but she — and Lucas Hedges — has a point. I mean, I’m gay as you can get. And yet, there are a handful of women who I think about, and I feel this light stirring of lust in my mind. I think about having sex with them. I wonder what it’d be like. I’m moody fascinated by the idea, even though I am certain I’d probably not even be able to get it up if I’m in the same room with them.
I don’t think you can be 100% anything on the sexuality spectrum.

“Not totally straight, but also not gay and not necessarily bisexual.” The idea of a spectrum, I think, is true and I wished more men were, like women, were willing to let themselves be, to go with what they really feel, to transcend the deep-seated discomfort of they feel about male-male affection. However, in talking about your sexuality as someone who is playing these important gay roles, the sentence I quoted above, I think, is unhelpful. Because it isn’t specific. Because the spectrum, as far as I know, becomes useless when we talk about sexuality as identity, as a way of being in the world, a fusion of one’s interior being and how the world reacts to that. The language is also vague, because it does not commit: I am neither this, nor that not this other thing, it says, and it does not say what it is. He’s been “infatuated” with men but “mostly attracted to women”, that sounds pretty heterosexual-identifying to me and that might not be the intention. I don’t know, I guess I’m just a bit uncomfortable, considering the ongoing conversation about the lack of access for LGBT persons in Hollywood and in the world, that one can be chameleony about this, planting their feet firmly in a privileged position while dangling it safely around the other, less privileged one. This is an ongoing internal conversation.